The man who everyone knew as Jake would go fishing as often as he could, especially along the Erie Canal, where his favorite fishing spots were located. He'd stand along the canal, often with his son William Spinks-Mason, catch what he could, and release the fish back to the water.

His fishing trips weren't about the fish, they were about a hobby he could share with his family.

So it's no surprise that his 53-year-old brother-in-law James Phillips and his 15-year-old son went with Mason on a fishing trip to the Seneca River in Lysander on July 6. What was surprising was that they went out in a canoe.

None of the three wore life preservers that Sunday afternoon.

Mason's wife Georgianna said the water was choppy that afternoon. Phillips was the first to lose his balance and fall out of their 15 1/2-foot Pelican canoe. He tried his best to stabilize the canoe to keep the others from falling into the nine-feet deep water, knowing that his brother-in-law couldn't swim.

View full sizeGene and Georgianna Mason at her brother James' house in May. Provided Photo

They were about 600 feet from shore when the boat flipped and Mason struggled to stay afloat. Mason's son, who suffers from osteoporosis, dove down after him, desperate to keep his father above water.

Phillips and Spinks-Mason called out for help, flailing in the water to draw attention. A group of boaters were about 300 yards away when they saw the canoe capsize. They rescued Phillips and Spinks-Mason, but when they pulled Mason onto the boat, he was not breathing.

He was given CPR and taken to St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center, but the damage had already been done. Mason was in a coma with partial brain damage that left him blind.

Georgianna Mason never left her husband's side. Sixty-two hours after he was admitted into the hospital, his life support was turned off.

"He wouldn't want to live like that," she said.

Gene "Jake" Mason was 55.

Georgianna Mason said she was willing to be her husband's caretaker had he survived, even if the brain damage and blindness left him a shell of the man he used to be. Because frankly, life with Jake was just about the only life she knew.

Theirs was a teen story made for a TV movie. The story of the shy 14-year-old boy meeting the equally quiet 13-year-old girl at the Burnet Park Zoo one afternoon 41 years ago.

Jake Mason was at the zoo that day with a group of friends, while his future wife was with another group. Someone in one of the groups knew someone in the other, so by happenstance, they met.

When Jake Mason left the zoo on his bike, he wasn't looking forward, only back to check out the girl that caught his eye that day. Georgianna Mason watched as he crashed into a tree.

A few days later, they met on a park bench in the zoo. This time, they actually talked to each other. Though she had only just met him, Georgianna Mason said she knew she met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.

And she was right. They married in 1986 after spending more than a decade together.

In February 1986, only a few months before the two were married, their 5-year-old daughter Tammy was killed when the school bus she was exiting from pulled out while she was still in front of the bus, crushing her.

Tammy was the third of the couple's four biological daughters. In 1999, after their children had grown, they began caring for William and Nieylisea, or Ni-Ni. The two were only months old when they took them in, and while Georgianna Mason said they never officially adopted the two, they treated them like their own.

View full sizeGene Mason and his then-3-month-old granddaughter Abby in this January 2013 photo. Provided Photo

After Tammy's death, Georgianna Mason began collecting angel figurines. Her husband built special shelves in their Shonnard Street house to hold the more than 200 reminders of their daughter taken from them far too early.

Now, she collects them for Jake. So far, she has two.

Building the special shelves for the figurines was just one of the many improvements Jake Mason made around the house.

He was a handy man, having worked for Smith Housing in Syracuse for about as long as he and Georgianna Mason were together. When he started, he worked odd jobs and helped out whenever he could.

If an employee works at Smith Housing for 10 years, the company gives them a house, owners Kaye and Greg Smith said. For Jake and Georgianna Mason, it was 223 Shonnard St. They lived there until Jake Mason bought their current house on Elm Street as a Valentine's Day gift for her in 2003 and sold the Shonnard Street house back to the Smiths.

For Jake Mason, a boy who grew up in foster care in Madison County, the house provided stability for him and his growing family, as well as a connection to an employer that considered the Masons to be "a second family."

"Jake was a wonderful, hardworking man," Kaye Smith said.

While living on Shonnard Street, Jake Mason called his boss and offered to paint a nearby building the company owned. Greg Smith, impressed by the work, made Mason a full-time house painter.

He painted houses for Smith Housing up until three or four years ago, when bad knees and an eventual knee replacement forced Mason onto disability. Greg Smith estimates that Mason did at least 100 house-painting jobs over the 25 or so years he held the position.

When he wasn't painting or fishing, Jake Mason could be found in his garden or camping in the Adirondacks. He never owned a vehicle, only a bicycle, but that didn't tamper his love for occasionally getting out of the city and into the wilderness. His favorite camping spot was in Old Forge, Georgianna Mason said. Just like everything else in his life, his family would be there with him. He'd go fishing up there too, of course.

Now, Georgianna Mason said her only choice is to be there for her family. She's been through it before. She's had loved ones taken from her by tragedy, but their six grandchildren, ages ranging from 3 to 16, are still wrapping their heads around their grandfather's death.

One of their grandchildren, a 9-year-old girl, was especially close to her grandfather, Georgianna Mason said.